


Whether Tomorrow

by Medie



Category: Highlander - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Awesome Jane Foster, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, POV Jane Foster, Thor: The Dark World, sort of Thor/Jane/Loki if you squint real hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 00:17:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9148411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: She's dying. She's dying by inches and it isn't the death her people should face. It isn't anything she's known and she's terrified.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ilien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilien/gifts).



> Set in the midst of Thor: The Dark World. My thanks to Celli for the edits. Much appreciated!

Her name was Jael once. An eternity ago, it feels. Jane dreams of those days sometimes, of standing outside her tent and staring at the stars, and wonders what she would have thought then to know some of them were inhabited. That on one played a child who would one day grow to become a man she loves.

She keeps her silence when Odin calls her mortal. If the Asgardians can't see what she is then she's in no hurry to tell them. She's perfectly aware of what it might mean. She knows that her Immortality might well be the only thing that's keeping her alive, but the words won't cross her lips. She should tell Thor, she knows that, but not here. Not now.

It's never an easy conversation to have and she's not foolish enough to think that it would be any easier with Thor, however long the Asgard actually live.

Besides, it seems pointless to have a conversation about whether or not she ages when the Aether might yet kill her anyway. She's old. Ancient, by human standards. Still, she can feel the weakness creeping into her. She's survived millennia on Earth. She's watched empires rise, fall, maps remake themselves anew every hundred years.

And now...

She's dying. She's dying by inches and it isn't the death her people should face. It isn't anything she's known and she's terrified. In the face of that, it seems so ridiculous to talk of an Immortality she may no longer be able to lay claim too.

When this is over, she bargains, she'll tell him then. She'll explain it all. Maybe she'll take him to the Abbey, let him meet Rebecca's husband, let him listen to her stories and John's of the teacher lost to a child's blade.

Then Frigga is dead and she isn't sure of anything; whether Thor will listen, whether she'll be alive to tell the tale...

Whether any of them will be.

"It's been a long time since I was afraid of dying." 

It's a strange thing to doubt tomorrow. She's learned that about herself now. It's different when it's a fight between Immortals. It seems that it shouldn't be, dying is dying, but it _is_. She's grown accustomed to the Game. She's grown accustomed to a sword in her hand and perhaps that's what it is. The reality of death by another Immortal's hand has replaced the fear of dying a thousand other ways.

For her, as for so many Immortals, death stopped being a random and unpredictable event.

Now...

"I'm dying."

Her guards ignore her when she mumbles to herself, but it doesn't matter. It isn't as though they have context to understand the real reason she's struggling. To their eyes she's mortal and one with precious little time left to her. 

Her guards ignore her when she mumbles to herself, but it doesn't matter. It isn't as though they have context to understand the real reason she's struggling. To their eyes she's mortal and one with precious little time left to her. She's to be pitied. Ordinarily, the thought would infuriate her, but she just doesn't have the energy to be angry right now. Time bleeds away from her, passing in a jumble of images and red heat.

Then Loki and Thor are there with a plan and scant hope and Jane doesn't care. She's seen Thor come back from worse and she'll trust him to save her from this. It feels strange to put her life in someone else's hands after so many thousands of years handling it herself, but there's a primordial force bleeding her immortality from her a little more with every passing second.

It's almost ridiculous to contemplate. She's dying because of a mystical compound and the Norse gods of thunder and chaos are shepherding her to an alien realm to fight dark elves who are trying to take over the universe.

She nearly laughs when she imagines Darcy trying to sum this up for her Chronicle.

"You must tell me when it's done," Loki murmurs into her ear, "I would just love to read it."

She turns and he's not there. Instead, he's standing at Thor's side, watching him pilot the ship.

If she survives this, if they survive this, there's going to be hell to pay with that.

It says a lot that she's almost looking forward to it.


End file.
